The Land of Faerie

Earlier this week I finished the last of a 5 book series by Melissa Marr about Faeries. As with most fantasy YA novels this series was truly entertaining and uniquely visioned. All five books have also been a great source of inspiration for me while I've been working on my own YA fantasy novel about dragons, which I've mentioned a few times. It's come a long way from last year with all the time I've had and I'm becoming rather obsessed with the story and my characters, which is a hugely exciting thing for me! But I'll talk more about that later.

Just the covers of these books alone are works of art. I'm totally in love with the covers! And the titles of the novels as well!

I've had the first two since they've been released and read them a while ago so I reread them (and found I'd forgotten most of the second book). It was confusing back when the whole series wasn't published yet because the second book doesn't follow the same main characters. The first, third, and fifth (and final) novels follow the same main characters and the ones in between cover side stories that are still essential to the overall story of the world of Faeries. I won't go into too much explanation, but the main things to know are that faeries can't be seen by humans (unless the faery wishes it), except for the rare few, one of whom is the main character of the first book, Aislinn, and most of the story revolves around her situation. Also, these faeries are not 'Disney fairy' (ie, Tinkerbell). They are human-sized, for one, there are many different kinds of them and most are dark, eerie, ruthless and well, 'wicked lovely'. Melissa Marr switches around from the points of view of multiple characters in each book so you get multiple sides of every story and she does this very well.

I enjoyed the first, third and last the most. The last, Darkest Mercy, I could barely put down and I read them all so fast that I consumed the first four all last month (in addition to one of the Vampire Diaries, which made for 5 books in one month - a record for me). It was tough, in some ways to deviate from the main characters for the second and fourth books, but it's necessary and the story gets more and more entertaining and complex with each book. I really have to admire Melissa Marr for creating such a well-developed and complex world. I highly recommend these books and I'll be eagerly looking forward to whatever else she comes out with.